Conlangers construct human languages, and the ones here are queer, meaning they express the thoughts, feelings, culture, and experiences of people who do not fit the cisgender and/or heterosexual mold.

I started my current conlang with two goals in mind, one was to codify certain ideas in my head for a potential conlang (And I'm really happy with the results on this part so far) and also to create a language to help describe gender and sexuality in a way that makes more sense than in English (this has been less successful).

My big idea so far for the latter point is to remove some of the words that establish "normalness" or "otherness" that you get in English. Take out straight -vs- queer because it implies that straight people are more normal than the "others". The same idea can be expressed by using more specific words for the situation.

For example, a woman might be attracted to men and would identify as [andro-sexual] (this also clears out the confusion of a trans* person transitioning: "I'm gay" "So you're attracted to men" "No, I'm a woman that likes women."). "Non-straight" people could be referred as something specific like what they are attracted to ([gyne-sexual]) or in terms of what they're not ([negated][andro-sexual])1 .

Similarly, you could speak of women who aren't attracted to women specifically as one group (whether they are asexual or lesbian, etc.) by saying that they are [negated][gynesexual].

I know it's a bit constructivist, but I was curious what other QueerConlagners have done to approach this issue.

1 One of the basic language constructs is the negation particle, which is represented with /k/ or /x/ depending on the situation. This is a pure negation where everything that is not in the referred set is then included. For example, <mi> or myself can be inverted to mean "everyone but me" with <k'mi> (note that this is different than saying "you", which implies the speaker themself or the group they belong to.)

Adínjo has genders, but they really only apply to a few words besides pronouns, so I'll share my pronouns. THe first thing to realize is that in the ancient past, at the dawn of their language, Adín were hermaphrodites. They were all of the same gender, and so they only had two pronouns: animate and inanimate. The animate pronoun, which would apply to any person, was <y>, and all modern nominal pronouns derive from this.

Their biology did change over time, and eventually they transitioned through a period of hormone alternations in which one set of sex organs was the primary function, and later on into a "typical" bi-sexual species. Thus they developed a need for gender terms.

<fi> /fi/ - she, her This is the proper term for a female whether biological or spiritual (the Adin term for a transsexual who has not transitioned is a "spiritual" male or female, as opposed to a "biological" one)

<ji> /ʒi/ - he, him As fi above, but for a male.

<xi> /xi/ - animate genderless, it The proper term for anything without any gender, or an unknown gender. Xi is not seen as dehumanizing within Adín culture, because it recognizes personhood/animacy, and simply recognizes the speaker's knowledge of the gender of the referent.

<lai> /läj/ - dual gender The proper term for anything with two *or more* genders. A spiritual male or female does not fit this category, as they only identify with one gender. Lai can refer to a hermaphroditic being, an intersex individual, or someone who identifies with both male and female (or other gender) aspects without exclusivity.

I personally find this a good compromise on number of lexemes and ability to address "non-normative" genders as well as to provide a term that, within its own language, does not bring a value judgment on non-gendered, or ambiguously gendered, beings as belonging to a different category. The counter-example, and offensive way to refer to someone who isn't male or female (who whose gender one cannot identify):

<gi> /gi/ - inanimate, it This term refers to a thing that is not living and which has no gender. To refer to a person with this term is offensive or insulting, and indicates that you consider them as not a person at all. This is actually a misadaptation of the older word (which should have become <ga>) by a leader who didn't understand why most pronouns ended with -i and <ga> did not.

I like your system of pronouns! Shonkasika has grammatical gender, so all nouns (and adjectives) have gender. Of its six genders, three, common, masculine and feminine, are animate and use the personal pronouns le, lo, la respectively. The three inanimate genders, neuter, celestial, terrestrial, use se, so, sa. With regards to people or sentient beings, common refers to unknown or unspecified gender or to some combination of genders.

My conlang is very gender neutral. It has all gender neutral pronouns and words like mother and father, actor and actress, etc. are also not gender specific. So far I haven't invented a lot of vocabulary for gender and sexuality, but I'm considering it. I might end up having "attracted to men/women/people/nobody" phrases.

I'm making a conlang for an alien species in a sci fi novel I'm writing, and the aliens in question have empathic abilities, very little sense of privacy and don't consider sex taboo. (Which results in awkwardness from human around them) so I feel like they would discuss gender and sexuality like they would discuss what food you like to eat or what clothes you like to wear, and I want to have a language that reflects that attitude.

The more I think about it the more potentially awkward for humans it gets because their empathic abilities make it nearly impossible for emotional dishonesty. If you like someone, everyone knows, thus the source of nobody caring. Like imagine a flashing neon sign with your crush's name on it.

That's a really interesting take on empathy. I haven't really thought about the implications of privacy because of telepathy.

For words like mother and father, are you suggesting that they will be grammatically neutral gender, or that the word mother itself is not going to have the idea of "female" attached to it? If the latter is the case, what's the point of even including the word "mother/father" over a single word that translates to "parent"

What I meant was that it's a single word that translates to parent and female or male adjectives may be added to mean mother or father if the situation needs that for clarification. I didn't really explain it very clearly, sorry.

At least concerning physical attributes, to mimic natural languages?
My current conlang, Shonkasika, has 6 grammatical genders. Three are animate, common, masculine and feminine; three are inanimate, neuter, celestial and terrestrial. "Common" encompasses people and living things that are both male and female, neither or without reference to either of those categories.